Kohler distinguished between such intellectual property and personality rights, demonstrating

that a person's intellectual creations exist independently of his personality, and form a separate
category of legal objects.1

The right of publicity can be referred to as publicity rights or even personality rights. In United
States, the Right of Publicity is a state-based right, as debated to Federal, and to date, to date,
twenty-eight states are on record as recognizing the Right of Publicity, of which eighteen states
have enacted Right of Publicity legislation. The Right of Publicity is a rapidly-evolving
principle with a history of reported cases in the United States and worldwide. By the broadest
definition, the right of publicity is the right of every individual to ascendancy any pecuniary
use of his or her name, image, likeness, or some other identifying aspect of identity, limited
(under U.S. law) by the First Amendment.

The term "right of publicity" was coined by Judge Jerome Frank in the 1953 case Haelan
Laboratories, Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.2 The extent of discernment of this right in the
U.S. is largely driven by statute or case law. Because the Right of Publicity is governed by state
(as against Federal) law, the degree of identification of the Right of Publicity varies
sententiously from one state to the next. Indiana is believed to have the copious far-reaching
Right of Publicity statutes in the world, providing acknowledgement of the right for 100 years
after death, and shielding not only the usual "name, image and likeness," but also signature,
photograph, gestures, distinctive appearances, and mannerisms.

There are other notable characteristics of the Indiana law, though myriad of the major
movement in Right of Publicity emanates from New York and California, with a compelling
body of case law which suggest two potentially contradictory positions with respect to
apperception of the Right of Publicity. In the United States, rights of publicity are enforced
through state law. Some states diagnose the right through statute and some others through
common law. California has both statutory and common-law strains of authority fending
slightly different forms of the right. The right of publicity is a property right, rather than a tort,
and so the right may be descendible to the person's beneficiaries after their death.

The Celebrities Rights Act, which was passed in California in 1985, grants personality rights
to a celebrity for 70 years after his or her death. Previously, the 1979 case of Lugosi v.

1
J Neethling, JM Potgieter & PJ Visser Neethling's law of personality (2005)
2
Haelan Laboratories, Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. 2, 202 F.2d 866 (2d Cir.).
Universal Pictures,3 adjudicated by the California Supreme Court held that Bela Lugosi's
personality rights could not pass to his successors.

3
Lugosi v. Universal Pictures, 603 P.2d 425 (Cal. 1979)